


Sentencing

by TopHat



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 00:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18789322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat





	Sentencing

They gave me three cigarettes a day, one with each meal. Each inhalation tasted like burning paper and nicotine, a mix that scraped at my throat and tongue, too harsh to properly enjoy. Cheap things, but I took them anyway. The smell of slightly-blue smoke stirred something in the back of my mind, something like tangled sheets and low, masculine laughter. Each time I tried to grasp the sensation more firmly though it slipped through my fingers like so much sand, so eventually I stopped trying.

It was easier to simply experience.

Today there was no meal. Only a short, blind walk to the elevator, a silent ride in a metal box, and another short walk down a hallway that sounded less like a prison. Two pairs of hands sat me down, roughly, then uncuffed and recuffed me to a table. The blindfold stayed on.

For a while I sat there, doing nothing at all.

Then another door opened. Footsteps clicked against the floor, hard-soled and heavy, and a chair scraped as it was pulled away from the table. Something slapped down on the table, then fell into the chair with a small wumph of displaced air.

The silence stretched on.

Eventually, a click rang out, soft, plastic on plastic. “This is Clockblocker of the Protectorate ENE, beginning the interrogation of Prisoner ABBC2, AKA Oni Lee AKA Abe Natsume, on September eighteenth, two thousand thirteen.” The speaker was young, with a tone that was light in the same way that fire was. Without substance, without a core, but undeniably present. A reaction, but no less real for its transitionary nature.

I mulled over the new information. Something felt off within them, a misstitched seam in the words. I began examining the irritation within the sentences, peeling apart nouns in search of truth.

“You’re getting ‘Caged, you know?” The question was rhetorical, so I didn’t answer. “They probably would’ve done it even without the dead Ward, but that really sealed the deal. Turns out Brockton Bay jurors don’t like it when someone kills hometown heroes, and less when those heroes are kids. The judge even okay’d the form to keep you from the stand. Too much of a flight risk, she said. Personally, I think she just doesn’t like kid-killers.”

ABBC2. Ayzn Bad Boyz, cape two. Those words meant something, but what they meant was unimportant. The stenciled text on the side of a box of munitions, or the barcode from a candy wrapper, devoid of significance to my mind.

Papers rustled. “Here we go. Brockton Bay versus Abe Natsume. Fun fact, the public defender who took your case didn’t use your name. He just kept calling you ‘the parahuman allegedly known as Oni Lee’. Not sure who he was trying to fool. Anyway, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Weapons charges, reckless endangerment, property damage, excessive self-defense, assault, aggravated assault, assault with intent, involuntary and voluntary manslaughter, murder in the second degree, and murder in the first degree. Multiple of all of the above.”

Oni Lee. Another moment of focus, dulled. A twitch, somewhere deep in my mind, more reflex than recognition. Memories of pain and fire, smoke that felt like cordite, not tobacco. More personal, more like the thing itself rather than simple constructs, but still lacking the fundamental truth that defined a subject.

A chair scraped against the floor and the voice began to move. “They’ve also listed you as an accessory to all of Lung’s shit. Pimping, human trafficking, possession with intent to distribute, grand larceny, racketeering, illegal loan sharking, money laundering, fencing, kidnapping, smuggling, you get the idea. The white-collar part of the PRT has been chomping at the bit to nail your gang for years, and may have single-handedly redeemed the legal profession in the process.”

Abe Natsume. Distant and sharp, an arrow held at full draw, aimed at my heart, but wrong somehow, just outside understanding, almost but not completely in place. I martialed what will I could, away from the dripping grey apathy, shut out the oppressive silence, quashed the desire to sit back and simply happen, and tried to think.

The footsteps stalked over toward me, growing louder and harsher. “See, this is supposed to be when you finally reveal your ABB secrets. Safe houses, resource dumps, whatever. Officially, that’s what’s happening, and if you want to spill the beans at any time great. Unofficially, I volunteered to give you your last debriefing before Dragon puts you in a hole to be forgotten because I’ve got a question that I really need answering.”

I strained behind my mask, walking through ghosts. Smiling faces that were more mask than person, a lone woman who refused to participate in the charde, who nonetheless played along, a message of some sort, a tearing sensation, behind and to the left of my breastbone, cold instead of hot...

A bang rang out, the noise distorting when the table froze beneath my hands, turning hard as stone and cold as vacuum. “Why!? What fucking reason was there to suicide bomb a teenager? You’ve been around for long enough to know that blowing up Kid Win would get Legend called on your ass! Velocity doesn’t throw rocks at a third of the speed of sound, Armsmaster doesn’t amputate limbs, and Miss Militia uses rubber bullets. We hold back so fucking much, and we do it so shits like you can go to prison instead of die! We try to keep the peace, try so hard to take the hits and turn the other cheek so the country doesn’t turn into a warzone, and you just—”

“Natsume Abe,” I interrupted quietly, the pieces falling into place.

Clockblocker stopped.

“I am Natsume Abe,” I repeated, holding the words as tightly as I could. “I was to marry. To inherit. There was another, one who smelled like Seven Stars. I was supposed to...”

I trailed off, lost in a dead end, my mind filled with smoke and fog.

“I do not remember.”


End file.
